cover image Fight Back

Fight Back

G. Gordon Liddy, J. Michael Barrett, Joel Selanikio. St. Martin's Press, $24.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-312-19945-6

Astute readers will quickly decipher the notoriously un-subtle Liddy's motives after reading how ""troubles in domestic preparedness"" are the result of a ""failure to engage the U.S. private sector and the American public in becoming responsible for their own security."" How, then, can a person protect against ""threats to individual health and safety that extend well beyond those of radical Islamic terrorism?"" Enter Liddy's ""Total Security Management(tm)"" system for business and industry. Though blatantly self-promotional, the book provides a worthwhile crash course in deconstructing the nature of threats and how to protect against them. A section on ""significant terrorist groups"" reads like a who's-who of violent radicals that's helpful to those who haven't been able to successfully differentiate the difference between Hamas, Jemaah Islamia and Hizballah, though the domestic terrorist list awkwardly sandwiches the Animal Liberation Front (whose ""activists are encouraged...not to harm any animal (human or otherwise)"") between the violent skinhead factions American Front and Aryan Nations. Still, this infomercial offers expertly solicited information (his co-authors are from the worlds of the military and medicine) in the form of emergency response guidelines, including what to do in case of radiation exposure or in the wake of a chemical or biological attack.